Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Death & Agony by PowerPoint - DoD's real enemy

Yes he is! The DOD spends an exhorbitant amount of time building PowerPoint presentations.

Now, I had an entire 4-hour credit course one summer in college to learn this nifty little skill. Except back then it was the "other guy's" product, mPower. But it was all the same. I did not know in my young idealistic days that my military officer salary, paid for by taxpayers at more than $60K a year and that doesn't include benefits and allowances, would really not require more than that 4-hour credit course. I would have happily skipped all the pain of statistics and chemistry lab!

Twitter today had a great tweet by @pricefloyd "Death by PowerPoint. Why is DOD so enamored by this communication tool?

What a spectacular question! My follow up is this: why hasn't the audit agency done a study to see how much time and money is wasted on making these things? My last job had two lieutenant colonels preparing massive briefs - 125 slides with 36 or so versions of the same brief for one general? What is wrong with Gen Mattis' approach? Just get up and talk.

Maybe we should send our officers back to Speech 101 and throw PowerPoint out the window.

About Me

Hey there, I'm Jennifer Lovett Herbranson and welcome to one of my online homes. Thanks for stopping by! As a writer, teacher, USAF Veteran Public Affairs Officer, I am working on my first fiction series and here you'll find updates about my writing life and issues dealing with the lives of Veterans. Since I'm a Southern girl, I invite you to grab a mint julip, sit a spell and enjoy some good Southern hospitality.